Lee Smolin

Physicist
Smolin is a cosmologist who has attempted to apply Darwin's theory of evolution on a cosmic scale. In his book, The Life of the Cosmos, Smolin argues that universes have the capacity to "reproduce," just like organisms do. According to an article in the July 1997 issue of Lingua Franca, when Smolin was asked about the metaphysical implications of his research, he replied, "As a friend of mine says, the whole show of the universe is so extraordinary that the absence of God is God enough."

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23-Jul-01 - "Another aspect of this is that a scientific cosmology can contain no residue of the idea that the world was constructed by some being who is not a part of it. As the creatures who makes things, it is our most natural impulse to ask: When we come upon something beautifully or intricately structured, who made it? We must learn to give up this impulse if we are to do scientific cosmology. As there can, by definition, be nothing outside the universe, a scientific cosmology must be based on a conception that the universe made itself. This is possible because, since Darwin, we know that structure and complexity can be self-organized. We understand that there are natural processes, easily comprehensible, by which organization can arise naturally and spontaneously, without any need for a maker outside of the system. This requires, however, that we take a more historical view of fundamental physics and cosmology. We must be open to the possibility that the answers to many of the questions we have about why the elementary particles or the fundamental forces are as they are?and not otherwise?may have answers that are, at least in part, historical." -- from http://www.flash.net/~csmith0/future.htm. Submitted by nowscape.